Rats!

We’ve had a little visitor for the past month or so. Steven’s pet rat, No-Doze (a little less than 8 ounces of energy and curiosity), has come to stay with us while he looks for a new home for either her or for the both of them. (Don't get yourselves all worked into a dither- I know some of you are repulsed by little critters.) She’s been pretty polite, quiet and really not much trouble at all.

I don’t have room for the kind of cage she really needs, so she stays in a little cage at the end of the kitchen counter by our back door. Unfortunately for her, this is only a couple of feet from where I plug in my blender or flour mill. She’s had a few frights with all the noise from the blender.

Today I needed to grind some wheat. The flour mill is a lot noisier than the blender, so I decided that I would put her in a bathroom, close the door and let her run around for a while until I finished with my flour. Not wanting her to make a mess, or chew on anything, I put the wastebasket, the plunger and the bowl brush up on the back of the toilet where she wouldn’t get into them.

Between batches of flour, I heard a noise in the bathroom and went to check on things. She had climbed up the bathmat that was hanging over the edge of the tub and had knocked a small bottle of shampoo into the tub. No big deal- I went back to my flour mill.

After I finished the last batch of flour, I hear another, louder, noise from the bathroom. Since it was now safe to put her back in her cage, I went to get her. There she was, on top of the toilet tank. Somehow, she had gotten herself up the smooth sides of the toilet and then up onto the tank, where she had shoved the plunger onto the floor and nearly knocked the bowl brush off as well.

I suppose if I went and looked carefully and really thought about it I could figure out how something that small could get itself all the way up those slick surfaces, but what I really don’t get is how she managed to undo the bolt at the base of the toilet!